I have a 12 year old who is less than fond of math and I am looking for some new resources that might float her boat a bit more, or some advice on how to get over the "math hating".
A bit of background...she went to a college prep school for elementary school and did very well in math, she absolutely hated the homework, thought of it as busy work and would take an hour completing something that should have taken her 15 minutes because of her bitter complaining about it, but would score extremely well on any test. For the last two years she went to a "gifted" school, and continued to complain about math, not because of homework, because she didn't get any, but because of the teaching (unfortunately the gifted school did not seem to teach math well and I think we took a giant step back). I hired a tutor for her last year and she liked the tutor and seemed to be OK with doing the work and she seemed to grasp the concepts, but the math complaints continued. To be fair she is much more of a language arts kind of kid, but she also loves the sciences and I think she has a knack for math but I just can't seem to find the right trigger to get her excited about it.
Forward to our current situation...this year we will be delving into homeschooling full time and we have been experimenting with the various online sources. I LOVE AoPS, she "hates" it...I think it is because it stretches her and forces her to get away from the rote work she so bitterly complained about previously (but was able to do) to actually having to "think". We also looked at Life of Fred and while she in mildly interested in the story telling I can not see building a math program around it. Most recently we are trying iMACs, she seems to like this, but this morning she tells me she can't see how any of the information she is "learning" will be useful :-) We've only scratched the surface of this program though.
Does anyone have a child who was not into math, but found a way to turn it around? Part of me thinks she is so used to complaining about it that anything I introduce will fail. This is probably as much of a parenting issue as it is a content issue. How can I help this kid??? Any advice is most welcome!
